Tried to post this on reddit but it didn’t show up for some reason
I’m sure you have heard the stories of game developers working 100 hour weeks during crunch time to complete video games. The video game industry is notorious for brutal working hours in order to meet quality standards and deadlines. I think the ridiculous work ethic these developers have comes through in many amazing games that we play. However, Japan is now strictly enforcing labor laws that greatly reduce legal monthly working hours. Even if a developer wants to stay until 2am to complete a project, he must leave the office due to labor laws. I wonder if this will impact the polish and overall quality of video games coming from Japan. Sakurai did a great write up on his blog that explores this.
Sakurai blog article: https://sourcegaming.info/2018/05/02/compliance-and-labor-vol-542/
Reading Sakurai’s thoughts is interesting. I completely agree with him in that non-work time could be spent doing non-gaming things which fuels the gaming side later on.
The question is: why is development taking up so much time now when it didn’t used to do so?
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